The protests in Ukraine cannot be reduced to simple causes such as facism, Russian hegemony, etc.
The following excerpt and the entire article decribes the many groups who have interests in the future of the Ukraine.
Some would have you believe it's mainly RW fascist thugs fighting Yanukovich and his government.
They are the ones getting the attention because of the violence.
Yanukovich's Berkut and the RW fascists serve each other's purpose. They both want nothing more than an excuse to attack any and everybody at the first sign of violence.
There are other protesters there for a myriad of reasons. Many were prompted to protest when Yanukovich passed extremely restrictive measures curtailing the citizens' rights. Others began when he refused to sign the EU agreement.
Once the wholesale destruction and fighting begins that has been seen in the last few days, it does break down into 2 main groups. Those who are fighting the government and those who stand with Yanukovich. This makes for unsavory allies. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
If you have been protesting, but have held back on being violent then there is a choice. You are now being called terrorists and lumped together as a nest of vipers by Yanukovich and the Kremlin. This is propaganda to convince all watching that they are in the right and fighting the return of the extreme RW. They want this thought to be so scary that other countries agree.
This obscures the fact that there are many different groups that have now coalesced into a force fighting the government. They can either stand up for what they believe or go home with no guarantee that the government will recognize their prudence. Once the bullets and explosives really start to fly, you choose.
It is a hot mess and not one that should be viewed through the lens of neat political groups. However, those differences will remain obscured as long as this extreme violence is occurring. What you are seeing now though is survival at the most basic level nuances be damned.
The government vs everybody else.
It's for all the marbles.
<snip>
The protesters represent every group of Ukrainian citizens: Russian speakers and Ukrainian speakers (although most Ukrainians are bilingual), people from the cities and the countryside, people from all regions of the country, members of all political parties, the young and the old, Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Every major Christian denomination is represented by believers and most of them by clergy. The Crimean Tatars march in impressive numbers, and Jewish leaders have made a point of supporting the movement. The diversity of the Maidan is impressive: the group that monitors hospitals so that the regime cannot kidnap the wounded is run by young feminists. An important hotline that protesters call when they need help is staffed by LGBT activists.
On January 16, the Ukrainian government, headed by President Yanukovych, tried to put an end to Ukrainian civil society. A series of laws passed hastily and without following normal procedure did away with freedom of speech and assembly, and removed the few remaining checks on executive authority. This was intended to turn Ukraine into a dictatorship and to make all participants in the Maidan, by then probably numbering in the low millions, into criminals. The result was that the protests, until then entirely peaceful, became violent. Yanukovych lost support, even in his political base in the southeast, near the Russian border.
After weeks of responding peacefully to arrests and beatings by the riot police, many Ukrainians had had enough. A fraction of the protesters, some but by no means all representatives of the political right and far right, decided to take the fight to the police. Among them were members of the far-right party Svoboda and a new conglomeration of nationalists who call themselves the Right Sector (Pravyi Sektor). Young men, some of them from right-wing groups and others not, tried to take by force the public spaces claimed by the riot police. Young Jewish men formed their own combat group, or sotnia, to take the fight to the authorities.
<snip>
The course of the protest has very much been influenced by the presence of a rival project, based in Moscow, called the Eurasian Union. This is an international commercial and political union that does not yet exist but that is to come into being in January 2015. The Eurasian Union, unlike the European Union, is not based on the principles of the equality and democracy of member states, the rule of law, or human rights.
<snip>
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/mar/20/fascism-russia-and-ukraine/
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